1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of education and to providing customized support services to learners and presenters. More specifically, the invention relates to the use of biometric, non-biometric and system data to inform the selection and execution of support services which maximize user engagement metrics and to enabling providers to negotiate service level agreements based on these metrics. This invention is applicable to many fields, including the fields of education, distance learning, teacher coaching and certification, on the job training, test preparation and certification, collaboration, e-government, accessibility, negotiations and trading.
2. Description of Related Art
Providers of educational and collaborative infrastructures and services to higher education institutions, retail chains, governments, and other organizations are experiencing increased customer expectations and the entry of new competitors, thus leading to increased customer choices. There is a need to meet these challenges in the higher education domain, the retail domain, the government domain, the test preparation and certification services domain, and the negotiations domain.
In the higher education domain, financial pressures fueled by declines in government support along with continuing tuition increases and declining endowments, along with greater demands for student performance, have led to an increased focus on operational effectiveness and efficiency. One consequence of these pressures is a change in the criteria used to select private technology partners, with preference being given to those providers who can best help higher education institutions lower their cost structures by enabling a more flexible and responsive IT infrastructure. Higher education is experiencing new competitors and players, leading to more student choice. Changes in the demographics of learners and their need for support services have positioned a college's learner support services as a strategic competitive advantage rather than an expense. Current systems for coaching weak instructors and for providing customized instructor and learner support services are labor intensive, costly, and often not implemented rapidly enough for maximum effectiveness.
In the retail domain, competitive pressures are driving such innovations as self-checkout and experiments in cost effectively providing customized e-learning “on the fly” to relatively low paid sales associates concerning the features and benefits of new products while at the same time improving their job satisfaction and reducing high turnover. The trend towards the on demand dynamic reallocation of retail shelf space to enable the increased use of dynamic promotions increases the need to provide retail sales associates with on-demand training. Current systems for sales associate training are not customized for their individual's learning needs and rely on centrally located classroom or computer based training facilities or large fixed kiosks.
In the government domain, budgetary pressures combined with increased citizen expectations for customer centric transactions and competition between municipalities, states, and countries to attract businesses which will employ citizens and pay taxes are driving e-government initiatives in which technology is a significant enabler. Current e-government initiatives are generally confined to access to information portals and one way messaging, with the goal of facilitating on-demand cross-agency collaboration dependent on transformations in business models, infrastructure and culture. An important aspect of infrastructure transformation involves the integration of private sector partners to support two way citizen centric collaboration infrastructures for multiple purposes including virtual town hall meetings and the delivery of customized support services from multiple agencies while respecting citizen privacy.
In the test preparation and certification services domain, competitive pressures are forcing meta-providers to offer a money back guarantee or an option to repeat the course without additional charge, regardless of whether the learning is delivered in individual or group contexts, in physical or virtual classrooms or self study, and whether the learning is delivered by live teachers, software programs, or some combination thereof. Providers and meta-providers of test preparation and certification services are faced with the necessity of pricing their offerings competitively, along with the above mentioned guarantees, while needing to accommodate situations where customers expect the providers and/or meta-providers to incur extra expenses to insure success in passing the relevant test.
In the negotiations domain, rapidly changing market conditions and shortened product lifecycles have increased the pressure to successfully conclude negotiations with customers, partners and suppliers by quickly building rapport. Techniques for using non-verbal communication to keep negotiations focused on solutions rather than demands are well known in the negotiations field. Current negotiations simulators, however, are generally directed to providing coaching in the correct cognitive responses to specific offers but do not provide feedback on the effectiveness of non-verbal communications in maintaining rapport.
One important aspect of providing effective learner or citizen centric services is maintaining a high level of user engagement with the task. Currently there are previously disclosed techniques for separately or in combination monitoring and evaluating biometric, non-biometric and user device data for purposes such as user identification and the assessment of user alertness, mood, and efficiency in achieving a goal. Suggested interventions, based on the variety of metrics generated from the monitoring, include keeping users awake and suggesting various courses of action, such as a more efficient task procedure for users to follow or modifying the content and pace of a teacher's lesson.
Other previously disclosed techniques seek to recognize the affective and emotional state of the learner and respond in an appropriate manner, modeling an expert teacher or collaborator, to keep exploration going in model based subject areas, such as science, math, engineering or technology.
While such systems address various aspects of user task performance and mood, and suggest various interventions, what is needed is a comprehensive end-to-end system, which enables providers to integrate previously disclosed monitoring and intervention techniques with previously disclosed information technology infrastructures, electronic learning environments, and electronic marketplace infrastructures to deliver on-demand services based on service level agreements with stakeholders in a variety of domains that involve learning and collaboration.